The opium eater reclines with rigid head
and just-open’d lips…

You all know how hard it is to find a good parking place
in a busy town. Well, we lucked out—or so it seemed—
while running an errand yesterday. I prepared to back in

when she said, no, not here. I too had noticed the man,
lying on his side against the wall, so I pulled forward and
said, why don’t you hop out here? Then I backed into

the space and got out. I pulled a buck from my wallet
and walked up the man, who looked up at me with
vacant eyes. He took the money with a sluggish hand,

and I caught up with my wife. He had his hand in his
pants, she said, explaining why she was annoyed
at me. Was it the hand that took the bill, I wondered.

We took longer than I thought, and I was glad I’d put
an extra quarter in the meter. The man was still there
when we returned, the dollar bill clutched in his fist.

… And such as it is to be one of these, more or less am I…

(words in italics by Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself)

Published in The Beltway Quarterly